The Other Way Around
by quondam
Summary: When Shepard wakes after surviving the Catalyst, she has to come to terms with the fact that Garrus isn't there waiting. Prompt from MEK on LJ.


_Written for the following masseffectkink prompt: "I've seen loads of fics where Shepard died and left Garrus behind to grieve for her loss. How about the other way round? Shepard survives the Catalyst. She wakes up in a hospital, expecting Garrus to be by her side... Except he isn't. He was hit by the beam and died immediately. Cue Shepard having to deal with losing her Turian friend/lover along with her grief for all those who died in front of her during the war. And realizing that she had always expected him to survive her."_

_Also, a warning that this story is very dark.  
_

* * *

The view from the hospital room wasn't anything to write home about. Though the landscape surrounding the building remained remarkably untouched by the war that had come and gone, there were only low-rising buildings and relatively barren streets for the few miles that she could see. There was some greenery, not much, and only every so often did she see a few people passing by on the walkways below, a hollow reminder of the things she and her friends had fought to save. It should've been enough, but since she'd first woken the few days before… it wasn't.

She sat by the window in the solitary room—a tribute to _who_ she was, since no doubt the rest of the hospital rooms were overfilled with those still recovering from their wounds—eyes unblinking against the sun that was burning high over head in the cloudless sky. Her right hand, the remaining good one, idly ran along the top crest of the wheel of the wheelchair she occupied, palm reveling in the sensation of worn rubber against her skin while never applying enough pressure or strength to actually move the chair along. It was a repetitive motion, a tick, and one that she lost herself in even as the door to her room opened and let in another occupant.

"Shepard," Liara's smooth voice offered as a quiet greeting as she came into the Commander's field of vision. She stood still, arms crossed over her chest, staring out to the scene Shepard had spent the entire morning contemplating.

There was no response, not even a nod of her head, although she did stop the movements of her hand, letting her digits pause, gripping white-knuckled at the wheel itself.

"Did you want to try to have lunch?"

The thought made her stomach roll. Shepard hadn't seen herself in a mirror since waking, but she had felt over her face and her cheeks, felt the gauntness there that translated to the rest of her body as well. Even if she'd been blind, she would have felt the weakness in her muscles and bones, a punishment of spending the last four months in a coma, body unmoving save for the daily physical therapy she'd been treated to in order to prevent blood clots, bed sores, and complete muscle atrophy. Like the time Cerberus had rebuilt her, Shepard tried not to think about it and all the other embarrassments her body had undergone while she slept. The catheter and gastric feeding tube still affixed to her was enough of a reminder of it all.

"Your nurses have a few things to start with, things your stomach could tolerate…"

Liara went on, and Shepard, though hearing her words, hardly processed any of it. The first day, she'd been awake a few minutes at most, though her progress had stretched gradually into hours. Today was the first day she'd felt well enough to even let the nurses attempt at getting her out of bed, even if it was only to sit in a wheelchair in front of the window a few feet away.

There was only so much stonewalling one could do to Liara, however, and just when Shepard least expected it, Liara was brushing aside some particularly long pieces of hair from Shepard's face. Her hair had grown in the time she'd been asleep. No one had cut it and it was the longest it had ever been. It was another harsh reminder of everything.

"Talk to me. I know you can."

She swallowed over the burn in her throat that hadn't left since she'd first woken, and shut her eyes to block out Liara temporarily. One poor attempt at steadying her breathing later, she reopened them, raising her head high enough to meet her friend's eyes. "Where's Garrus?"

Liara, for however many days and weeks and months had tried to prepare for this conversation should Shepard _ever_ wake up, wasn't ready for it. And Shepard, ever the best person at reading someone else—alien or human—knew the expression. Though, if she was honest, Shepard had known the answer before she'd even gotten the guts to ask. She'd woken alone in the hospital room, no one by her side. A nurse had come in eventually to see her eyes open, body struggling to move at all. Shepard would never forget how truly helpless and hopeless that had felt. Liara had arrived the day before, from wherever the hell she'd been. All of them, all her friends, they'd written her off as good for dead, she assumed. They had other things to worry about, like rebuilding life for the ones that had survived, not the ones that had little higher brain function.

"Shepard…"

Her eyes watered before Liara even stuttered out her name, and Shepard couldn't afford the strength to hold her head up any longer, letting it hang, shoulders hunching forward in her chair. Never one to show emotion, she couldn't avoid it in that moment. She wailed, sobbed, body seizing into a fit of cries, the denial she'd been living under no longer able to hold up its veil. Liara touched her back through the thin cloth of the hospital shirt she wore, but Shepard violently shrugged the touch away, falling back into the consumption of her grief.

"Don't!"

Liara persisted, this time coming to kneel on the floor beside Shepard's wheel chair, resting a hand to her knee, the other to Shepard's cheek. The Commander didn't bother to fight her off this time.

"I'm so sorry."

The words weren't empty, Shepard could even hear the Asari's own sounds of stunted grief, but they felt meaningless to her. Garrus was a friend to Liara, a good friend, but nothing more than that. She couldn't even fool herself into believing Liara had any understanding of the pain that she felt. Maybe it was wrong of her, after all Liara had lost a mother and most of her planet and species, so she was no stranger to the sensation. But this was different, Shepard told herself, and she wanted to drown in it on her own.

Liara held Shepard as she sobbed, even let out some of her own tears, but remained a stalwart paragon of strength and support to the Commander. When Shepard quieted down, though by no means done with her grieving process, she was brave enough to continue with the details she knew her friend not only needed, but wanted, to know.

"He died in the blast when you were running to the beam. He was found a few hours after the Reapers had gone cold. I'm told it was a quick death." These were the things people needed to hear, was it not? There was no true way to verify it, but she repeated what she'd heard, nonetheless. "Painless."

Shepard buried her face into Liara's shoulder, the words only sending her back into her grief.

"His father and sister, they buried him on Palaven."

She pulled away from Liara suddenly, upper body twisting towards the other side of her chair, her stomach twisting and clenching as she reacted with the urge to vomit. The pain as her body wretched was intense, an empty stomach trying to reject whatever nourishment wasn't there as the rest of her was overcome with the nauseating emotion of being alone. Not only that, but of the fact that even with all those they had saved, _he—her Garrus, her lover, her friend, the most loyal person to the end_—had died because she'd taken him with her to the beam. She'd been selfish, wanted him with her when they went up there, wanted him to have her back and her to have his. Now, she thought, as her gag reflex worked in overdrive and she spit up yellowing bile and saliva onto the hospital floor, if only she'd left him behind… if only she'd taken Liara instead of Garrus, he'd be sitting beside her now. She choked again at the sickening thought of willingly rationing another friend for a lover.

And like a good friend, unbeknownst to the thoughts that betrayed Shepard, Liara was there for her, wiping her mouth with a towel, rubbing her back, calmly telling her to take it easy. Like she was a child, Shepard thought. Weak and useless. She could taste the acid in her mouth and it only made her cry more.

At some point she'd fallen asleep like that, waking back in the hospital bed, blankets covering her. A nurse at her bedside gave an apologetic glance as she injected a viscous and unsavory looking fluid into her feeding tube. So they'd given up with trying to get her to actually eat, she acknowledged in her own sad kind of amusement. Her head lolled to the side on the partially upright back of the bed, and when the nurse stepped aside, Liara was still there. She moved her chair closer to Shepard.

"You scared me," Liara admonished, shaking her head. There was real worry there, painful sadness, and though Shepard could tell Liara's nervous, empty hands wanted to touch her reassuringly, she kept them to herself. Probably out of fear of setting Shepard off again.

"Sorry," Shepard said, wincing at the pain of dryness. "Water?"

Liara gathered the cup and straw, and held it to Shepard's chapped lips, letting the Commander drink what she saw fit. Shepard didn't take much, just a few shallow sips to get her mouth coated in a cooling temporary relief.

"I'm… I'm okay," Shepard lied. Liara could be stubborn, and if she had any inclination that other news would garner the reaction it had before, she'd be more than happy to keep the information to herself. Especially while Shepard was too weak to even get out of bed on her own. "Sit-rep, soldier." She said, and forced a small smile at the corners of her mouth.

Liara met the weak grin. "Well… we're still here, so that says a lot, Shepard." She gave a quiet, restrained laugh, but didn't let much of her mirth get out. "Kaidan's been coordinating a lot of the relief efforts in North America. He'll be here in a few days, he said." She went on to tell Shepard about how Joker and the Normandy were still flying. Tali had returned for Rannoch not more than a month before, just as Wrex had gone back to Tuchanka. Vega was working for the Alliance, clearing out some Cerberus strongholds. Javik had gone missing a few days after the end of the war. No one had seen him since.

Shepard listened, asking questions every now and then, but her mind was elsewhere, still captured by the man neither of them mentioned this go around, both of them too scared to bring up his name again. She turned her head away, looking back towards the window. The sun was setting now, the sky a mix of blue and orange, the moon already shining bright, reflecting light down onto the planet.

"I want to go see him," Shepard finally said.

"You've got a long recovery," Liara protested halfheartedly, knowing it to not be much of a use.

"I don't care. Get me whatever the fuck they want me to eat. I'll eat, so long as it gets this god forsaken tube out of me. Whatever benchmarks they want me to hit before they let me go—I'll hit them tomorrow," she gritted out with a determined intensity. "I'm going to see him, and if you're not going to help me to do it, then I'll find someone who will, Liara."

The room was silent for a long while after that, and part of Shepard believed Liara was going to call her bluff—which would have been a problem, because Shepard had no doubt that any and all of their friends would stand on the side of Liara and the doctors, rather than help Shepard prepare for a trip across the galaxy when she was too weak to even stand. There was a deep exhale, however, and then Liara's voice.

"Give me a few days. I'll get you to him."

—

Liara was true to her word, just as Shepard was as well. She'd been an exemplary patient, pushing herself beyond her body's limits and tolerances without a complaint, so long as it put her one step towards leaving the hospital. Her doctors didn't agree with her going so soon, in fact they'd vehemently argued against it so much they'd even called Hackett to have a word with her, but it was without any luck. Shepard was leaving, with or without their permission, especially once Liara had given her word that it was the Normandy that would be taking Shepard out to Palaven personally.

Once alone, Shepard had sobbed in the quiet of her hospital room. The ship should have been a comfort, but it was a nightmare, if anything. She didn't want to go back to that ship knowing the memories that were housed within its walls. When Liara had returned to collect her for transport to the nearest dock, Shepard had put on a brave face, and wiped away the tears from her reddened eyes.

Most of Normandy's crew were not the ones she knew. The majority of the ones that weren't _dead_ had returned to find what remained of their families and to active service where they were needed. There were strangers everywhere, ones that drew up rigid salutes when they weren't busy watching her with revered glances. It was unsettling, but in some ways, was better than the faces she did know, the ones that walked on eggshells because they understood the significance of the planet they were heading towards.

Joker, god bless him, still traded his off-colored jokes with her, though his laughter at the end always felt more than a bit feigned. Forced. Kaidan had come along for the ride, and Shepard had learned to abhor the time she spent with him, always lingering in fear that he was about to make some grand comment of his sympathies for what she lost. _Who_ she lost. The only safe space she had was her cabin, and though she knew another person had stayed in her quarters during the months the Normandy had been under someone else's control and thus all of her belongings had been packed up, she couldn't bring herself to return to the space she and Garrus had last occupied together.

Instead, she'd wheeled herself across the crew deck, stopping at the foot of the short staircase. Traitorous steps, she now thought of them as. Shepard engaged the locking mechanism on the chair, and one-handedly—her other limp and useless arm hanging in the sling around her neck and shoulder—pushed herself upwards. It was trying, damn near impossible even, and try as she might, all Shepard could think about was pushing herself up after they'd been hit by the Reaper at the foot of the beam.

She shut her eyes for half a second, tried to will the past version of herself to just turn around, to get one final glimpse of Garrus before she proceeded forward. She was never able to imagine it, though, because she'd been too focused on the mission to give a care for the man she'd left behind. She winced at the pain she felt in her knees and back, and grunted through it. Shepard believed she deserved that pain, deserved it for leaving the Turian she loved to die on his own.

A nearby crewman shouted to her, quick steps hitting the floor as they tried to rush over in her struggle, but Shepard called them off. She had to do this on her own, despite how unsteady and weak she was. They hovered behind her, she couldn't see them, could only _feel_ them, but she tried to ignore them just the same. She placed one heavy foot on the first step, and then flexed the proper muscles to lift herself, the other foot meeting the first on the ledge. The process repeated, breath growing deep, nearly yelling out at she finally made it to the top.

She wanted to give up right then as she stared down the long hallway. At the end was just the doorway, the same one she'd passed through hundreds of times—sometimes for legitimate reasons, but mostly, with false excuses just to pass a half a minute more with the man who dedicated most of his time to keeping the ship's weapon systems in tip-top shape. It felt a hundred miles away now, even as the steps continued, slow and unsure.

A hand raised to open the door, but she came to a stop, unable to shake the feeling that when the two halves parted, there would be something on the other side. No, not Garrus, hiding away and playing some cruel joke on her all this time. Instead, a marauder, the hull of what used to be a Turian, waiting for her to cut out her existence one last and final time. But while she knew she should have been scared—or at least _prepared_ for the fight—Shepard only felt a glimmer of peace. Maybe, this time, she wouldn't fight back.

The door opened. There was no marauder on the other side. There was nothing.

Shepard collapsed on the floor and cried, her back to a wall. Kaidan found her there a few minutes later, and immediately she knew that watchful crewman was the culprit. EDI would have let her mourn in peace.

Kaidan enveloped her in his arms, and though he knew it wouldn't mean much, he offered his words anyway. "I've got you, Shepard."

—

They arrived on Palaven, to the city where Garrus was born and raised, the surface of which looked about just as bad up close as it had when Garrus had pointed it out as the fiery, burning spot on the planet when they had been on Menae. Shepard had turned down the use of an enviro-suit against the planet's low level radiation. It was precautionary, but needless, she'd argued, for how little time they'd be spending on the planet. Though to tell the truth, if she'd committed to years on Palaven, Shepard never once would have fitted herself in the protective jumpsuit.

Feeling like the invalid and burden she thought herself to be, she was pushed in her wheelchair from their ground transport out towards the Turian version of a cemetery. All sentient life had something similar. Maybe, she thought, it was a marker for when life crossed the line of simply animal and into something more, when they took care of and buried their dead. She raised her hand as they neared the latest plots, the grasses a little lower, fresher, newer, compared to the spaces that had been filled prior to the Reaper war. There were so many new ones, she noticed. Even more that were freshly covered in dirt, their bodies only recently committed back to the soil.

Behind her, Liara stopped pushing the wheelchair over the terrain, and Kaidan, knowing her thoughts without her even saying them, rounded to Shepard's front and helped her to stand up. Her steps remained just as unsteady as they had been over the days before, but her endurance was growing, and Shepard, on her own, finished the final venture towards the reason they'd come at all.

She couldn't read Turian script, not well at least, but long ago she'd learned a few characters, mostly during her time in detention back in Vancouver, pre-Reaper invasion. Shepard hadn't known how Garrus really felt about her back then, but she'd held on to some hope that when—not should, for she _knew_ it was inevitable—they meet again, she'd be able to share her new knowledge with him. And she had, in the end, the night they'd picked him up from Menae.

After making sure Victus was settled in and they'd had their own private reintroductions in the main battery, she and Garrus had met up in her quarters, eager to test that amalgam of Turian and human kissing out again. They'd been well on their way to another cross-species sexual liaison when Shepard had stopped them, both nearly nude, and fetched a scrap of paper from her desk. Garrus had reached for his visor on her nightstand, to put the translation software to use, but Shepard had caught his hands in hers and simply nodded to the piece of paper. He'd unfolded it skeptically, taken a second to read over the ink marring the surface, and then turned to her with a wide-eyed expression. It hadn't been much, just a few words, in his native language. _I missed you, Garrus Vakarian. _They'd been slow and gentle with each other that night.

So when Shepard saw the carved stone marker on the ground, she more than knew the symbols of his name.

Her chest heaved with unshed tears, eyes watering rapidly as she became overwhelmed. Part of her deep down had hoped until that moment that it wouldn't be true. She could close her eyes at night, and in between the nightmares of her last few weeks before she'd fallen into that coma, Shepard dreamed of him, both the time they shared together and the things they'd wanted to have for themselves. Hours in her cabin learning each other's alien bodies like they were their own. A home somewhere on an unrecognizable but beautiful planet. And children—God she'd never, ever thought of becoming a parent until that moment on Earth Garrus had suggested it and instantly she'd known, without a doubt, she wanted them... so long as he was the one to raise them with her. She dreamt about the children they'd never have every single time she closed her eyes.

"This wasn't how it was supposed to be," Shepard said to herself and his corpse buried feet beneath her. "I was supposed to be the one that didn't come back." Her head shook and she raised her hand to her eyes, covering them both. "You were going to go on. Remember me, but be happy. That was how it should've been."

Slowly, she shifted down to her knees. Beyond her, she could hear Liara yelling.

"I'm fine!" She returned with, and continued to behave as if she was the only one there. She laid down, spreading her body along the grasses, weeds, and dirt, her back lying over the length of where he mimicked her position down below. She shut her eyes to block out the sun, but mostly to hold back the flow of tears she felt releasing. Her head turned and Shepard nuzzled her cheek into the ground. This was as close to him as she'd ever get again. Her salty tears watered the earth.

"I don't know how to live without you, Garrus," she confessed. "Do you know how stupid I feel saying that? I've been on my own most of my life, and everything I've ever lived through has reminded me of it. Mindoir and Akuze and dying over Alchera. I know how to be alone. But… I just don't want to be anymore. I saved the galaxy, finished my mission, but this is never how the story ends, is it? I'm supposed to get the happy ending—we both are. The ending we deserve. I'm not meant to look down the next hundred years and know I have to spend them without the person I love."

Her hand rubbed into the soil, though no matter how long she did it or how hard she imagined it to be something else, she only felt the cool dirt, slightly warmed by Palaven's sun. It would never be as warm as he was against her skin. The whistle of the wind would never match the deep tones of his gravel-like voice. She'd never lie on anything else ever again and feel the reassurance of lungs and breath. She'd never make love to another person, human or alien, and feel what he did to her, hear his grunting against her ear, the tickle of his talons down her sides. She knew what everyone would say, that time healed all wounds, and maybe eventually she'd move on. Find someone else to love and a new place for herself. But after the life she'd lived, she only wanted what she'd lost.

"It was my fault," she said, and that was perhaps some of the worst of the pain she'd been feeling. "I brought you into this. It's my fault you're gone." Shepard beat her fist into the ground once, then twice, and let out the strangled cry she'd been holding back. "I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do anymore."

How long she stayed there unmoving, she didn't know. Much like that day in the hospital room, the next thing she woke to was her friends beside her, Kaidan rubbing a hand to her cheek to ease her awake.

"Shepard. Garrus' father is here. If you're up for it, he asked if he could talk to you."

She blinked herself awake, head swimming with the thoughts of her unfinished dreams and Kaidan's words. "Here, right now?"

Liara touched her shoulder. "Right now."

Shepard allowed them to help her up, and she did the best at one-handedly dusting herself off as she could. They'd never talked about this, about meeting his family, but Shepard knew it had nothing to do with shame for being in a relationship with a human, and everything to do with the fact that until almost the very end, Garrus had feared the worst for what remained of the people that were his flesh and blood. Still, though, she didn't feel any better about crossing paths with the senior Vakarian.

Off in the distance, she could see the familiar shape of a Turian approaching, the details clearer the closer he got. He had the same long fringe they all did, but his carapace and collar was particularly large, just as Garrus' had been, at least compared to the other Turians she'd seen. By time she was able to make out his facial markings and eyes that were just as blue, Kaidan and Liara had left her again, though they'd left her wheelchair nearby should she have needed it.

"Sir."

"Commander."

It was something of a stalemate, and though Shepard couldn't be sure what the Turian was feeling, her half of it was due to, in large part, the fact that he so closely resembled the son she loved. Had she not been made aware that he was indeed not Garrus, Shepard would have flung herself into his arms, willingly giving in to believing in whatever God had brought him back to her. Now, though, his image just filled her with a sharp pain all over.

"My son," he paused, eyes drifting to the ground, "he talked about you often over the last few years. I always wanted to thank you. I think he was a little lost during his time at C-Sec, and the time after your… death, not that I ever wanted to see it." His acknowledgement carried some shame for him. "And you're the one who pulled him out of it."

Her brow furrowed, and Shepard's gaze equally fell on the ground. "He pulled me out of it, too."

He breathed out an exhale, a painful one as indicated by the duration and sound of his mandibles unsteadily clicking softly. "He cared for you, very much, and I feel as though it's my responsibility now to make sure you get through this. For my son's sake."

Shepard didn't make a sound.

"I believe that he… ah," he paused, unclear in how to proceed, "that he intended to ask you to be his bondmate."

Shepard's knees wobbled at the admission, and before she could make a fool of herself by giving in to weakness and ending up flat on the ground, she made a move towards the wheelchair beside her. Garrus' father helped her into it, and though the assistance was welcomed, it set her skin alight in memories of Garrus' own hands traversing her skin night after night.

"He never asked, but I think we considered ourselves anyway. For a longtime before the end." At some point along the way, their touches and words and _everything_ had changed between them. No longer were they just working off tension as two people curious about their differing bodies, instead they were part of a pair, each of them retreating to their mutual quarters together at different points of their day. He'd touched his forehead to her, treated her with the kind of reverence one didn't give the casual fuck. They'd never said it all aloud, but Shepard had known what it all meant. He was hopelessly hers, just as much as she was his.

"Turians, they mate for life, don't they?" There were all sorts of exceptions to the rule, Shepard knew, from what little research she'd done. Frequently they had children 'out of wedlock,' but there was a devotion to their offspring even if it wasn't proper. And sometimes, bonds, however official, did sour, but it was virtually unheard of for a Turian to take another bondmate after their first had fallen apart. Choosing a bondmate was not something everyone did, but when it was done, it was for life. The ideal that humans strived for, but so rarely achieved.

Vakarian gave a painful look, as if he was reading her mind and the ulterior motive behind her question. "They do."

Shepard just nodded, swallowing over the lump in her throat like she was drinking his words and their meaning in. Forever, she'd be his.

—

The Normandy remained in orbit over Palaven for the days that followed, docking on the surface each day while Shepard trekked on daily vigil to visit Garrus' grave and spend sometime exploring the terrain. She was getting stronger every day, pushing herself further and further, and by week's end, she'd even made the trip on her own, despite the protests from those looking out for her wellbeing.

It was the last day, however, as Shepard had Joker put in their updated itinerary to Alliance command. The ship would be returning back to Earth, and where things went from there, she didn't know, nor did she care to begin to consider.

Shepard gently touched her hand to Joker's shoulder and the pilot raised his head and eyes to regard her from where he sat. "Everything okay, Commander?"

"Mmm," she hummed, and let her hand remain in an odd show of affection. "You're a good man, you know that, right Joker?"

He paused, face crinkling for a moment. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"I am," Shepard offered in reassurance, patting him before withdrawing her hand and letting it hang at her side, the other still suspended in the sling at her chest. Forever, they told her, it was likely that arm would be unusable. Liara had insisted there would be something to do to fix it, and had even said she'd forwarded Shepard's medical reports to Miranda Lawson who had made it out of the war alive. Even, Liara had let it slip, if it meant cutting the limb off at the shoulder and replacing it with the synthetic alternative altogether.

That thought had particularly unsettled her. To just cut something off—_a part of her_—and replace it like it had never been there at all. She couldn't, wouldn't, ever abide it. Shepard would sooner carry the dying flesh alongside with her the rest of her life than she'd let them take it from her, no matter how much everyone could protest a replacement would be almost the same. To her, it would never be good enough.

"Take care, Jeff," she said, their eyes meeting for half a second before Shepard staggered off. "EDI?"

"Yes, Shepard?"

"I've left a few things in my cabin. Let Liara know in an hour that she should come collect them."

"Of course," EDI blinked, watching her with a careful eye, but she said no more.

Just as she'd done to Joker, Shepard touched her hand to EDI's shoulder, smiled, and stepped away to pass through the airlock.

She took the waiting car off on her own, stopping at the cemetery she'd grown to know well. There were a few others there today, visiting with what remained of their loved ones, but Shepard paid them no mind, even as she knelt at his engraved stone and let her tears flow freely.

Her hand went to her neck, feeling for the metal chain weighed down by her dogtags, and pulled them off. They weren't her original pair, those were still in their frame somewhere, and they weren't the ones she'd worn for the months they'd been together, as those has gotten lost between running towards that beam and her body's recovery afterward. They were new, a pair someone had made for her as she laid in deep sleep. A token to wishing her back to health. She laid them atop the gravestone, leaned forward, and kissed the engravings of his name.

Afterward, she didn't steer the vehicle back towards the Normandy, but rather a piece of land not too far away she'd found a few days before. A spot overlooking the water down below, where waves lapped at the jagged cliffside. When Garrus' grave had no longer brought her comfort, she'd come here, stared at the sea and thought of the lives that she'd lost along the way. Thane, Ashley, Mordin, Anderson, and hundreds, thousands, millions… even billions of others. And Garrus, of course. Always Garrus.

Shepard stood, her gait grown steadier and stronger though still lightyears away from where she'd been months before. Her energy was waning, but she'd have just enough, she was sure of it, even as tired steps carried her away from her car. She stopped, and like those days before, thought back to those she'd lost, though this day her thoughts stayed with the man she loved in particular.

She heard the far away sound of a car door coming to a close behind her, and Shepard shut her eyes, knowing all too well what was coming. She'd taken too long somewhere along the way, or someone on the other end had been too _fast._

"Shepard!" Liara shouted.

"Stay back, Liara," she responded, loud but not yelling, keeping her back to her friend.

The Asari's voice was strained, painfully so. "_We_ need you, Shepard. Whatever you're thinking of doing, this isn't it."

"Don't. I'm tired of what everyone else needs of me. What about what _I _need?"

"You don't need _this._" She continued her movements forward, slow and careful, approaching Shepard like one would a wounded, feral animal.

Shepard remained still.

"Do you really think this is what Garrus would want—"

She turned around sharply, unsurprised by how close Liara was to her. An arm's length away. "Of course not! He'd want to be here with me." Tears welled in her eyes, but her rage—at the world, the galaxy, the Reapers, even _Liara_ for stalling her—held them back. "But he's not here. So frankly I don't give a damn what someone else thinks he'd want."

"This isn't you, Shepard."

Her head shook, looking away. When their eyes met again, Shepard's held the weight of the worlds. "Why'd they save me?" And there it was. That look. Survivor's guilt, an expression she'd worn so many times before. When her family had been slain around her, shot and slashed and skulls bashed open on their home and rocks of the soil below. When her surrogate family, that squad of Marines that had finally given her that sense of _home_ had been torn apart by thresher maws. She'd been pushed to her breaking point, time and time again. Maybe this was finally the straw that broke the camel's back. "Why couldn't they just let me die in peace?"

"Because we care about you!"

"No!" She took a step backwards. "I'm done, Liara. I'm done! Don't you understand? I shouldn't have come out alive. I wasn't supposed to. I should've died a hundred times before now and no matter what happens, _something_ pulls me back. But not anymore. Not anymore."

Anguish tore through Liara's chest just as much as it ripped through Shepard. Behind her dark blue eyes, Shepard could almost see Liara's line of thinking, that perhaps if Shepard made a run for it she could be strong enough to pull her back with her biotics. Maybe Shepard would forgive her for it eventually. Even if she didn't, it would be worth it. It wasn't what Shepard wanted to hear, or imagine that she was hearing.

"There's no Shepard without Vakarian," she recited, as if he was beside her.

Liara looked at her with confusion. "Of course there is."

"No, there's not. And I promised him…" She wiped at her tears with the back of her hand, but gave up the illusion of decency and let them continue to fall. "That he'd never be alone. And he is now, don't you see? I need to go be with him."

Liara wept as she stared across at her friend. That kind of love, whether it was sane or not, had never been something she'd ever felt in her life. But regardless, it couldn't make her accept what Shepard was willingly giving herself over to. "I can't let you. I can't."

"Please," Shepard pleaded, all but breaking down completely. She crossed the space between them and curled her arm around Liara who responded quickly, holding her with the kind of force she'd used when pulling Shepard back from near certain death on Thessia after the floor of the temple had collapsed beneath them. "I'll be okay," she whispered against Liara's neck, squeezing her tight, fingers digging in to the other woman's skin. "But I've lived my life for everyone else. I've tried to make my own rules and now… I need to do this for myself. I don't expect you to understand."

"How could I ever understand what you're asking of me?"

Shepard pulled back just enough, her arm still around Liara, but their faces at enough of a distance to regard one another. "Take care of everyone for me."

"No," Liara whispered, begging as she repeated the word.

"I know you will." She pulled back, forcing Liara to release her as she broke off contact. Shepard touched her open palm to Liara's cheek, taking an ounce of the woman's heat with her. She stepped back again, and this time Liara didn't follow. "I'll see you on the other side."

"I love you, Shepard."

She nodded, smiling genuinely despite the tears, a kind of clarity passing through her. "I love you too." Shepard took a final look back to Liara, savoring the image, before she turned on her heels, and summoning every ounce of remaining strength she had left in her body, took off running towards the edge of the cliff she'd visited day in and day out.

In her last seconds, she thought of that bar waiting for her, and the Turian sitting on his own. She'd be joining him soon.

Shepard took a running leap, shut her eyes, and threw her body into the deep sea below. When she hit the water, she didn't feel the ice cold chill that forced the air from her lungs and seized every muscle in her body. She felt warm, she felt _him_, and she knew he had come to bring her home.


End file.
